The sun is streaming in as 64-year-old former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling reclines on a sofa in his front room, drinking tea and eating sponge cake.

The former Labour politician turned life peer meets me in his roomy Victorian home in Edinburgh, where he has just returned after sailing his new motorboat in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. We are discussing his love of novels when he volunteers: “I am quite happy at the moment.”